Douglas Jardine leads England on to the field for the second Test of the Bodyline series in Melbourne in 1933. Photograph: Hulton Deutsch/Allsport

The first 1,000 Test matches spanned 107 years; the second 1,000 took only 27 years to complete; and the third? Well, it may be more than another 27 years before we reach 3,000.

This may come as a surprise to anyone at Lord's on Thursday. The 2,000th Test is a sell-out. The ticket touts are out and about. Test cricket is trendy. But this is a peculiarly British phenomenon. More people will witness Thursday's play at Lord's than watched the entire three-match series that India recently completed in the Caribbean.

Test cricket flourishes in England. It can also flourish in Australia, especially when England, with their travelling band of supporters, are the opposition. It is not quite redundant in India or South Africa. But every cricketing nation except England has become more dependent upon that form of the game in which only the ball is white.

For the commercial men beyond these shores one-day internationals and Twenty20 are a much more attractive proposition than Tests. And the commercial men usually win. In 1975 Pat Gibson, now the chairman of the Cricket Writers' Club, spotted the pattern. "Cricket must be the only business where you can make more money in one day than in three," he wrote. Today he might add "five".

But for the purists – and there are still plenty out there – the Test match ebbing and flowing over five days remains the pinnacle. Those purists will be eager that the 2,000th match at Lord's reinforces the potential for beauty and drama.

For almost a century after the first match in Melbourne in 1877 Test cricket was the only vehicle to drive the game forward. It also provided the most reliable barometer of a cricketer's standing. According to KS Ranjitsinhji at the beginning of the last century cricket did a bit more than that. "It is among the most powerful links which keep our Empire together. It is one of the greatest contributions, which the British people have made, to the cause of humanity."

JH Thomas, secretary of state for the Dominions, took a rather different view in 1933. "No politics ever introduced in the British Empire ever caused me so much trouble as this damn Bodyline bowling."

Test cricket has always had the capacity to infiltrate the front pages and to reflect the real world. Think of 1933, when the prediction of Rockley Wilson, coach at Winchester College, upon the appointment of Douglas Jardine as England's captain for Australia, almost came true. "Well, we shall win the Ashes," said Wilson, "but we may lose a Dominion."

In the 1950s the cracks in the old order were beginning to become visible and this was mirrored by what was happening in cricket. At Lord's there was much angst over whether it was possible for someone who was not an amateur to captain England's Test team. In 1952 they selected Len Hutton, a professional, to lead the side for the first time against India at Headingley. Heads were shaken, eyebrows raised, but the earth kept spinning on its axis.

There was a reprise of this debate in 1954. "But surely we need an amateur to take the side to Australia?" The Rev David Sheppard, a safe pair of hands (at least, metaphorically) and an amateur, was sounded out as an alternative to Hutton for the Ashes tour. The newspapers got wind of more agonising at Lord's. They had the splendid idea of conducting polls among their readers. Hutton was eventually chosen – and the Ashes were retained.

By 1960 a similar debate was going on in the Caribbean when Frank Worrell was made the first black official captain of West Indies. Worrell would go on to lead the side in Australia in a series that not only produced the first tied Test, but also reinvigorated an ailing game. Sir Learie Constantine soon noted Worrell's contribution. "Before that wonderful tour of Australia in 1960-61 Barbadians would tend to stick together and so would Trinidadians, Jamaicans and Guyanans. Worrell cut across all that. Soon there were no groups. Just one team." West Indies' first black captain was probably their greatest.

There were more headlines and more blinkers had to be removed in 1968 when Basil D'Oliveira, having hit the Australians for 158 at The Oval, was omitted from the England touring party for South Africa that winter. Cock-up or conspiracy? We would still like to know, even if there are few witnesses left from the most dramatic selection meeting in cricket's history. The old guard were desperate to maintain links with South Africa. But they could not prevail even though there was a determination that South Africa's 1970 tour of England should go ahead.

It seemed to matter a lot whether Test cricket was going to be played or not, which helps to explain why there was such a hullabaloo when Kerry Packer intruded in 1977. The end of the cricketing world was at hand, we were warned, as the best players suddenly recognised that they were worth something. Oddly enough, they quite liked the idea that they might be paid handsomely for their talents.

The challenge now in Test cricket is to make the five-day game marketable in an age that is so impatient for the outcome. We look on anxiously to see whether it can evolve successfully outside the UK. The game has moved on constantly since Alfred Shaw, his frame not so dissimilar to Samit Patel's, propelled the first delivery in Test cricket to Charlie Bannerman in Melbourne – though Shaw, no doubt, was, even then, aiming for the "right areas".

In England the game was conducted by an amalgam of gifted amateurs with memorable initials – WG Grace, AC MacLaren, CB Fry, JWHT Douglas, APF Chapman – augmented by doughty professionals, who did most of the bowling.

Somehow everything changed with the advent of Donald Bradman. In the Lord's Test of 1930 England scored 425 in their first innings, 375 in their second, and were still beaten by seven wickets inside four days. Bradman, "a genius with an eye for business", as RC Robertson-Glasgow put it, raced to 254 out of Australia's total of 729 for six declared. He brought a new pragmatism to the game, which highlighted the dilettante approach of his opponents.

Unwittingly Bradman, with his 974 runs in that 1930 series, spawned the "leg theory" of Douglas Jardine. Without Bradman Jardine would not have felt the need for Bodyline.

Pragmatism was the hallmark of Hutton as captain as well, but no one minded that in 1953 when all rejoiced at the Coronation, the conquest of Everest and England regaining the Ashes after 19 years. Four draws were followed by victory at The Oval and Wisden tells us: "There were times when industry almost stood still while the man in the street followed the tense battle between bat and ball."

But by the 60s the man in the street was getting a bit tired of all this pragmatism. The cricket was slow and often dull. The over rates may have been splendid; the run rate was often dire. Geoffrey Boycott was famously dropped after grinding to 246 not out against India in 1967. A Test ticket did not interest the touts too much.

For years the governors of international cricket off the field had been England, usually in alliance with Australia (apart from that little hiccup in 1932-33). These two sides had often held sway on the field as well. But by the 70s that was beginning to change.

In 1971 India were victorious in a series in England for the first time. New Zealand and Pakistan would have to wait until 1986 and 1987 respectively, but by then there was no doubt which was the best side in the world: West Indies.

Clive Lloyd, even though his side had been thrashed by Australia with Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson at full throttle in 1975-76, knew that he had a galaxy of brilliant batsmen at his disposal, even though his side had been thrashed by Australia with Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson at full throttle in 1975-76. He then decided that even if his four best bowlers were fast ones he would play them all anyway. It was a decision that would disappoint every international batsman on the circuit. For 15 years West Indies were formidable.

That team scored its runs rapidly by contemporary standards. This was not a calculated tactic. It was just that with Vivian Richards, Gordon Greenidge and Lloyd himself at the crease runs were bound to come quickly.

But the great Australia sides that succeeded West Indies scored quickly on purpose. Players such as Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist were encouraged to go after bowlers with an array of strokes that would have the compiler of the MCC coaching book looking on aghast. The logic was simple: score more quickly and there was more time to bowl the opposition out. Test cricket was a far more entertaining spectacle than for decades.

Test matches involving Australia rarely ended in a draw. They usually ended in an Australia victory with Shane Warne causing havoc. Warne demonstrated that there was an alternative to the all-out pace battery of West Indies, by resuscitating the old art of wrist-spin bowling.

It was still possible to bowl sides out while propelling the ball at less than 90mph. As with West Indies throughout the 80s we wondered whether Australia's dominance would ever wane.

But the cycle moves on. Today West Indies can hardly win a game in their deserted new stadiums. In Australia they are gazing at their navels, trying to work out how they lost two consecutive Ashes series and how they stand as low as No5 in the Test rankings. Ahead of them are South Africa, competitive since their return in 1992, and Sri Lanka.

Meanwhile India (1) and England (3), the two financial powerhouses of world cricket (in that order), are battling away for the top spot. And, in St John's Wood at least, it still seems to matter.